Two months have already passed since the beginning of the “Amoris laetitia family” Year, an initiative accepted with enthusiasm everywhere in the world and we like to turn our gaze to our family life experiences. We discover that we have lived very happy moments allowing us to enjoy the work, the rest and the meetings … we have learned also to be cheerful in the midst of difficulties. One to the other, we pass that joy and our open heart as source of happiness because “there is more joy in giving than in receiving” (cf. Acts 20,35). That is exactly what the Year of the Family intends: to help us to grow in the joy of loving and to be missionaries of joy; that at the end of this Year dedicated to the family, may we be grown in the joy that is fruit of the true love.
We also recognize that, in some moments, sadness has invaded us and we have transmitted in the environment our negativism and lack of integrity and we have almost caused family breakups. “Conflict cannot be ignored or concealed. It has to be faced. But if we remain trapped in conflict, we lose our perspective, our horizons shrink and reality itself begins to fall apart” (cf. EG 226).
Let us today enter barefoot into our reality, because it is sacred land (cf. Ex 3,5), always keeping our gaze fixed on God who is joyful. This joyful God dwells in us.
God makes happy our hearts: «You have given to my heart more joy than when they abound with wheat and new wine» (cf. Ps 4,7). Joy is born in the heart of God; He is neither sad nor melancholic and therefore, those who love God experience his same feelings and rejoice with Him , “But joy for all who take refuge in you, endless songs of gladness! You shelter them, they rejoice in you, those who love your name” (cf. Ps. 5,11).
God rejoices in his creation and God’s creation reflects the joy of its Creator: “Desert pastures blossom, and mountains celebrate” (cf. Ps. 65,12). The Word of God invites us to join and rejoice with it and to sing joyfully, raising our voices and clapping: «Sing joyfully to the Lord, all the earth» (cf. Ps 95,1).
As a part of that creation, we also rejoice: “With all my heart, I will praise the Lord; let all those who are helpless, listen and be glad.” (cf. Ps 34,2), “Praise the mighty rock where we are safe” (Ps 95,1). With Jesus, joy is always born and reborn in us and we are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness (cf. EG 1). Saint Paul VI told us: “No one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord” (cf. Exhort. Apost. Gaudete in Domino 22).
“The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, […] where there is no longer room for others […] God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt”(cf. EG 2).
“Shout praises to the Lord, everyone on this earth” (Ps. 100,1). That is a personal and family matter.
In our common home the wounded and abused nature, lives the human family, the family of humanity, a family of a broader level that also within itself, receives wounds that tear and disjoin it. That is why “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development” (cf. LS 13).
The best ecological practices require the cooperation of all and of each member of the family. The excessive consumerism affecting us today is an important cause of the high environmental pollution we all are complaining of, without thinking that each one of us contaminates individually himself and does not take into consideration the family, group and social consequences of our personal and common choices.
Every year, the UN invites us, on the International Family Day, May 15th, to deepen one of the sustainable development goals. This year 2021 the theme is goal no. 13: “Take urgent action to combat climate change, focusing on families and family policies to adopt urgent measures to combat climate change and its effects”.
The UN invites us to pay attention, among others, to the following goals:
- To improve education, awareness and human and institutional capacity, in order to mitigate the effects of this climate change.
- To strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to risks related to climate and natural disasters, in the different countries.
Our assignments could be: To consume only what is necessary, to enjoy the outdoors, free spaces and ornamental plants, to keep clean and welcoming the spaces of our house since we deserve clean places where we like to stay, to use what is necessary because, maybe, we have things that someone else needs.
In short, let’s keep what we have in such a way that it may be useful and delighting to us; at the same time, let us make the others feeling well. Do you like to be up for it? I am up for it and I invite you to do the same.
What is left to us, is to carry out actions in order to face this challenge as a family, dragging our neighbors to do the same; through that, we’ll build families happy in their daily love and enjoying the space where we live. Neighbors too will feel well; Pope Francis invites us to be good neighbors “[…] the sense of neighborhood [where] each person quite spontaneously perceives a duty to accompany and help his or her neighbor […] where these community values are maintained, people experience a closeness marked by gratitude, solidarity and reciprocity. The neighborhood gives them a sense of shared identity” (cf. FT 152).
This same month of May we celebrate Pentecost. We need the Holy Spirit’s warmth and fire for the transformation of families. He works in us and helps us to carry out our tasks and this is the experience of many praying people in whom a different life pulsates and whose gaze sees beyond; that could be granted to us too.
The first task of Christians is precisely to keep alive the flame that Jesus brought to the earth (cf. Lk 12:49); and what is this flame? It is love. Without the fire of the Spirit, sorrow supplants joy, routine substitutes love, service turns into slavery. The Holy Spirit makes us to experience the moving joy of being loved by God (Pope Francis Catechesis, March 17, 2021). And whoever feels loved, loves and loves with joy.
HNA. BERTA MARÍA PORRAS FALLAS, TC